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Figure S1. (A) Correlation between the contrast Speech -Speaker task and the proportion of hits in the speech task. (B) Correlation between the contrast speech/clear -speaker/clear task and the proportion of hits in the speech/clear task. Orange points denote those participants, that scored poorly on the reading speed and comprehension task. Most data points are close to the ceiling on the right of the behavioural score.
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Comprehending speech in noise is a difficult daily activity, yet humans master it with the help of a complex neuronal decoding system spread over the cortical hierarchy. Sensory thalami are central sensory pathway stations on this hierarchical ladder. Recent studies have shown that the left ventral auditory thalamus (ventral medial geniculate body:...
Citations
... We performed a random effects meta-analysis to test whether the (non-significant) effect of the main effect of task in the present study (i.e., speech vs speaker task contrast) was different from other studies that have reported a significant task-dependent MGB modulation for speech. We included five studies in the meta-analysis that each contained a speech task vs control task contrast: two experiments from von Kriegstein et al. (2008b), the data from the control participants of Díaz et al. (2012), the result of a recent study (Mihai et al., 2019), and the result of the current study. The meta-analysis yielded an overall large effect size of d = 0.85 [0.06, 1.65], p=0.036 (Figure 8). ...
... Based on previous findings (von Kriegstein et al., 2008b;Díaz et al., 2012), we expected significant responses for the speech vs speaker task contrast in vMGB. The lack of a significant main effect of task (speech vs speaker) in the vMGB was surprising, and the meta-analysis showed that the nullfinding was indeed different from categorical task-effects (speech vs loudness tasks and speech vs speaker tasks) observed in other experiments in participants with typical development (von Kriegstein et al., 2008b;Díaz et al., 2012;Mihai et al., 2019). ...
... In the previous studies different speaker voices were synthesized from one original voice to differ only in two key voice-identity parameters, that is the acoustic effect of the vocal tract length and the fundamental frequency (f0) (von Kriegstein et al., 2008b;Díaz et al., 2012;Gaudrain et al., 2009). Vocal Díaz et al., 2012 (n = 14), the result of a recent experiment (Mihai et al., 2019) (n = 17) as well as the current study (n = 33)). The meta-analysis yielded an overall large effect size of d = 0.85 [0.06, 1.65], p=0.036. ...
Sensory thalami are central sensory pathway stations for information processing. Their role for human cognition and perception, however, remains unclear. Recent evidence suggests an involvement of the sensory thalami in speech recognition. In particular, the auditory thalamus (medial geniculate body, MGB) response is modulated by speech recognition tasks and the amount of this task-dependent modulation is associated with speech recognition abilities. Here, we tested the specific hypothesis that this behaviorally relevant modulation is present in the MGB subsection that corresponds to the primary auditory pathway (i.e., the ventral MGB [vMGB]). We used ultra-high field 7T fMRI to identify the vMGB, and found a significant positive correlation between the amount of task-dependent modulation and the speech recognition performance across participants within left vMGB, but not within the other MGB subsections. These results imply that modulation of thalamic driving input to the auditory cortex facilitates speech recognition.